Statistics Canada announced that the country's railways carried a total of 27 million tonnes of freight in February, up 1.0% from the same month last year.

The Federal agency reports that total rail freight originating in Canada increased 0.2% from the same month last year to 24.4 million tonnes.

Non-intermodal freight decreased 1.3% to 266,000 carloads in February. The amount of freight loaded into these cars totalled 21.7 million tonnes, down 0.3% from the same month last year, due to reductions in tonnages of other oil seeds and nuts and other agricultural products (-43.7%), wheat (-10.0%), other chemical products and preparations (-31.6%), and coal (-3.6%).

Intermodal freight loadings rose 2.8% to 178,000 units from February 2016 to February 2017. The increase stemmed from a 2.9% increase in containers-on-flat-cars and a 1.0% gain in trailers-on-flat-cars. In terms of weight, intermodal traffic increased 4.7% to 2.7 million tonnes.

Freight traffic received from the United States rose 9.1% to 2.7 million tonnes as a result of a 10.2% increase in non-intermodal freight and a 3.3% decline in intermodal freight from the United States.